The technical education regulator, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Ministry of Education along with CyberPeace Foundation (CPF) have launched a project to train students and educators in Cyber Security awareness. Named Project eSaksham, it focusses on developing skills in cyber security domain, mainly for college students and teachers.
The aim of the project is to build a community where the internet strengthens instead of becoming a weakness, while making the youth industry ready and to also create a secure ecosystem where research work can be transformed into market ready products.
The launch was attended by Professor Anil D Sahasrabudhe, Chairperson of AICTE over an online Zoom meeting, along with Buddha Chandrasekhar, Chief Coordinating Officer of AICTE; Lieutenant General (Dr) Rajesh Pant (Retd), National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC) and Captain Vineet Kumar, Founder and President, CyberPeace Foundation.
The capacity building project was undertaken owing to the lack of manpower in the domain, an official statement issued in this regard said. According to NASSCOM, India had a shortage of one million cyber security professionals in 2020. The labour crunch is expected to hit approximately 3.5 million unfilled jobs by 2021, it added.
Launching Project eSaksham Professor Sahasrabudhe said: “Everyone wants to be happy and safe... As civilization grew and we developed the World Wide Web, there were new challenges thrown to us. The eSaksham project will teach the participants how to identify and mitigate those challenges. Indian students are already very tech and IT savvy, participating in the eSaksham training will be a way to contribute to society.”
eSaksham Training
The eSaksham training will be conducted at four levels. A total of five lakh students and educators will be trained through the online sessions. As per official data, as many as 25,000 CyberPeace Corps volunteers and 500 CyberPeace fellows will also be created through various levels of training, and 50 CyberPeace Clubs will be set up across the country.
Level 1 will be a two hour long online workshop on the basic concepts on navigating cyberspace, including cyber security, netiquette and introduction to new technologies. A total of five lakh participants will be trained in level 1.
Level 2 training will be a four-day long workshop. It will be conducted for a total of 25,000 participants, who will be shortlisted through an assessment test at the end of Level 1 trainings. The participants will also be enrolled in the CyberPeace Corps volunteer programme and will work on ongoing as well as independent projects, focusing on the interest areas of the participants.
For Level 3, a total of 5,000 participants will be shortlisted, who will undergo week long training sessions customized to suit their interests and skills. This level training will include IoT security, cloud security, blockchain and infrastructure security.
The final level, level 4 will be for 500 CyberPeace Fellows, who will be shortlisted through a series of assessments. An intense 30-day intensive training session will be conducted in collaboration with the government, academia and the industry. They will also be connected to mentors and will have access to laboratories and cyber ranges, to further develop their skills. Successful completion of training shall make the participants eligible for a certificate by AICTE and CyberPeace Foundation.
